


Halfway Mark of Chris Chibnall's New Doctor Who

by Tammany



Series: Doctor Who Meta-Drop [3]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Analysis, Lit-Crit, Meta, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-22 20:48:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16605194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: An overview of Chris Chibnal's interpretation of the Doctor, focusing more on his vision than on her gender.





	Halfway Mark of Chris Chibnall's New Doctor Who

The 12th Doctor (Chibnall and Jodi Whittaker's Doctor Who)

Ok. We are halfway through Chris Chibnall's first run. Here is my sense, so far. People like Jodi Whittaker for the most part. They like the companions. They are...appreciative of Chibnall, and on the whole the anti-Moffat crew in particular keep expressing a *desire* to love his work. But--

My sense is that Chibnall keeps failing to make the sale for his own show-runnership. That may be wary caution on the part of viewers. But my gut reaction is that he's worked so hard to maintain high standards of craft and discipline that he's failed to let go and offer his own pure, passionate, undisciplined charisma. If he has any.

Which comes across as catty, but...

When I was learning art history (the MANY times I learned art history) I was fascinated by the sharp line of division between the Neoclassical school vs the Baroque, leading to the Romantic, leading to the Impressionist.

Moffat was, IMO, somewhere in the Baroque/Romantic/Impressionist school. Yes, I know, he's famous for his complicated, nit-picky looped self-referential stuff. But he never really bothered to make it work, so long as you got the *feel* for it--the passionate pain of a paradox. The agony of a time-trap. The blinding delight of parallel time lines. Moffat painted in broad, emotional strokes to sell melodramatic stories about emotional, vulnerable, passionate characters, the Doctor most of all. Moffat's Doctors were among the most emotionally tempestuous, from his contributions to Davies' Eccleston and Tennant Doctors, to his own Smith and Capaldi.

I think that, as you might guess observing Chibnall's Broadchurch, that he's a natural-born Neoclassic show-runner. He is into "the craft." He wants to perfect the detail. He wants to avoid the messy, embarrassing overreach of Moffat's noisy, blowsy, mildly inebriated melodrama. He's determined to make Doctor Who a respectable, disciplined product. But the trouble is, it's damned hard to fall in love with the Neoclassics. It's so much easier to love a Rembrandt, a Delacroix, a Monet, a Vincent Van Gogh. The tight, obsessively controlled, hyper-craftsmanship and restraint of neoclassicism is so un-charismatic compared to the loose brushwork and emotional call of less dignified, respectable painters.

Chibnall's a neoclassic trying to prove the superiority of his mode in contrast to an impressionist as beloved as he was despised. People LOVED a whole lot of what Moffat did, both under Davies and on his own. Yes, people hated a lot of what he did, too. But he never left you simply bored by his competence and his disciplined care. Chibnall does, a bit.

It really doesn't help that I sense that he finds the whole charisma-appeal-emotional-noise thing a bit embarrassing when contrasted with, say, the brooding, subtle, almost Nordic control of a show like Broadchurch. There's almost nothing less winning and charming than an artist embarrassed by his own genre.

Will this destroy Doctor Who? Nah. The actors are warm and inviting. The character work, for all the tight discipline, is well-thought-out. With luck Chibnall will find some authors to push back hard against his own craftsman's discipline and reserve. And within a few years, it will either go into hiatus for a decade or so--or a new show-runner will come and present yet another school of artistry for our enjoyment, and in the meantime a bit of neoclassicism clears the palate and resets the norms. It's not a disaster. It's just not likely to sell people on Chibnall's vision to the extent it might.


End file.
